Although tests and assessments--such as those used to maintain a physician's Board certification--are often viewed merely as tools for decision-making about one's performance level, strong evidence now indicates that the experience of being tested is a powerful learning experience in its own right: The act of retrieving targeted information from…

Quizzing can be beneficial as a tool for learning and practice instead of its traditional use as an assessment. Specifically, the use of low stakes quizzing (LSQ) can aid in: (1) retention; (2) subsequent learning; (3) corrective feedback; (4) improved metacognition; and (5) study habits. Best practices for utilizing quizzes are discussed,…

Social studies education suffers from a distorted rendering of purpose and mission. Rather than pragmatically employ the social sciences to furnish the material for inquiry into normative and moral issues, social studies classrooms too often focus on declarative, disconnected, atomized, and meaningless content. The National Council for the Social…

This chapter identifies some of the challenges surrounding data collection and analysis regarding development students, including testing and identifying academic needs, placement determination, and measuring student outcomes.

Arguably, constructive alignment has been the major challenge for assessment in the context of problem-based learning (PBL). PBL focuses on promoting abilities such as clinical reasoning, team skills and metacognition. PBL also aims to foster self-directed learning and deep learning as opposed to rote learning. This has incentivized researchers in…

This brief paper introduces a new approach to assessing the trustworthiness of research comparisons when expressed numerically. The 'number needed to disturb' a research finding would be the number of counterfactual values that can be added to the smallest arm of any comparison before the difference or 'effect' size disappears, minus the number of…

Background: The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) is an independent charity that was established in 2011 with the explicit aim of breaking the link between family income and educational achievement in England. Over the seven years since its inception, EEF has contributed to the existing evidence base by funding over one hundred randomised…

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted education across the globe leading countries to adapt how they administer and manage high-stakes examinations and large-scale learning assessments. This thematic review describes the measures that countries have taken, in terms of policies and practices, when learning assessments are disrupted by emergencies and…

The GED® test was built from the ground up to give students a test that measures the skills they need to succeed. The test focuses on the foundational knowledge and skills needed for career- and college-readiness, so colleges and employers know that students who pass the GED® test have the skills to excel on the job or in the classroom. This…

Computer-based testing can be a powerful means to make all aspects of test administration not only faster and more efficient, but also more accurate and more secure. While the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) exam is a computer adaptive test, there are other approaches. This installment presents a primer of computer-based testing terms.

As both the frequency and the severity of network breaches have increased in recent years, it is essential that cybersecurity is incorporated into the core of business operations. Evidence from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012) indicates that there is, and will continue to be, a severe shortage of cybersecurity…

Birnbaum raised important challenges to testing transitivity. We summarize why an approach based on counting response patterns does not solve these challenges. Foremost, we show why parsimonious tests of transitivity require at least 5 choice alternatives. While the approach of Regenwetter, Dana, and Davis-Stober achieves high power with modest…

Despite pressures to narrow the curriculum and focus only on testing, there are teachers who continue to work social justice issues into their elementary lessons through the subject of social studies. These teachers speak of education as an instrument for the public good. In this day and age, it can be hard to find teachers with such…

Canada welcomes around 24,000 refugees annually (Citizenship and Immigration Canada 2015; 2016). Many adult learners with refugee experiences join English as an Additional Language (EAL) classes every year, whether these classes be federally or provincially funded. These adult learners with refugee experiences bring to EAL classes varied…

The measurement of student learning is becoming increasingly important in U.S. higher education. One way to measure learning is through longitudinal testing, but this becomes especially difficult when applied to cumulative learning within programs in situations of low persistence. In particular, many Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) find…